'Caramel Heart' blog tour: E. R. Murray interview

About Elizabeth:

E. R. (Elizabeth Rose) Murray lives in West Cork where she writes, fishes and grows her own vegetables. Caramel Hearts is her first book for young adults. Her debut novel for children aged 10–12, The Book of Learning – Nine Lives (Mercier Press) was chosen as the 2016 Dublin UNESCO City of Literature Citywide Read for Children. Elizabeth has poetry and short fiction published in journals across the UK and Ireland. Caramel Hearts is Elizabeth's sophomore novel - available from all good bookstores now.
 
Interview:

1. Can you sum up Caramel Hearts in a tweet?

#CaramelHearts – a coming of age tale about family, friendship, betrayal, addiction, & hope, with real cake recipes!


2. What was the writing process like for you?

I wrote Caramel Hearts at a difficult time – my first book had received plenty of interest, but no book deal, so I made the decision to shelve it and write something else, something completely different. This was Caramel Hearts. Liv Bloom had been talking to me for a while, and I was compelled to write her story. I could feel her spiralling and I needed to give her a voice – but I was pretty frustrated at the time and disappointed that I hadn’t managed to secure a deal. 

I knew the book was going to look at the effects of addiction and would contain a handwritten cookbook, but other than that, I wrote the first draft blind. I always write my first drafts organically, without any plotting or planning or editing, otherwise it kills the story for me and I lose interest. I also always write my first drafts in a month. Usually 65K words; I like losing myself in the intensity, then coming back to shape and sluice it later. 

During the first draft stage, all felt great, but when I got to the editing stage, I suddenly found that I was completely torn up with worry over whether I’d be able to get it published. I’ve always been driven, so I still worked away at the manuscript, but these were pretty toxic conditions to be writing under. I realised that I had to let go; I had to stop focusing on the end result and enjoy the actual process. As soon as I managed this, I fell in love with writing all over again and the story flowed. 


3. Who is your favourite character?

 I actually really like Sarah. She’s quiet and unassuming, but she’s Liv’s rock. Sometimes, the strength of the quieter people around us gets overlooked, but I think Sarah shines through in this story. 


4. Why did you choose to write from Liv’s point of view?

This was always Liv’s story, but I’m so glad you asked this because originally, I wrote Caramel Hearts in third person and I got it so, so wrong. I was about six drafts in when I realised; the plot worked and the characters were well developed, but there was something about the voice that wasn’t quite right. I decided to experiment and rewrite the first couple of chapters in first person. This doesn’t come naturally to me – I prefer to write in third or second person - but it was the right thing to do. My agent agreed, and so I rewrote the whole book in first person. It was a real challenge but it was also magic! Liv’s voice was much stronger and everything came together the way that I had hoped. 


5. When you think of Liv, what words do you associate with her?

Great question! Creative, lost, loyal, willing, means well, sensitive and trying (in all senses of the word).


6. How do you think your perception of Liv will differ from your readers?

We all assess and make judgements about people all of the time, whether we’re conscious of it or not, and our reactions are so personal, determined by our own experiences, that I expect all kinds of reactions to Liv - and the other characters also. I expect that from all my books. Every time a person reads a book, it’s a completely unique experience that will never be replicated – that’s what I love so much about reading. 


7. It’s no secret that Liv’s mum is an alcoholic. Was it a concern featuring this in Caramel Hearts?

Addiction was always central to the story. I wanted to explore the impact of addiction on a family unit as it’s much more common than people may assume and affects so many lives on a day to day basis. In Caramel Hearts, we’re talking about an alcohol addiction, but there are so many types of addiction and on so many levels; the common denominator, however, is the damaging fissures that it causes among family and friends. I wanted to create a story that resonated with anyone who has been affected by addiction – I wanted it to be realistic but to also have hope. 


8. Were you worried that readers would write her off as an alcoholic instead of taking each page as it comes?

People often do judge addicts by their addiction so this may well happen. However, I’m hoping that readers will be able to see the different elements of her character, understand where the cracks surfaced and see how a person might descend into addiction. Maybe they’ll even look at a person with addiction in a different light afterwards? Good people can make bad choices and as a result, cause harm to those around them. Sometimes they get stuck. Some will break free, while others will never manage it. I’ve seen both many times in my own life. However, I’m a strong believer that we’re all responsible for our own actions and our choices; that even if we get lost, we can find our way if we choose. That’s what all the characters in this book have to learn in one way or another. 


9. Sarah is meek and shy, but she has a fire in her. Do you feel she’s the moral compass of the story, in a way? 

Sarah is certainly Liv’s rock. She’s the grounding force. She has a completely different background – though not without its own challenges – but she deals with it better because she has a much clearer sense of who she is and what she believes in. 
 

10. How do you see Hatty and with the absence of their mum, how does this shape their relationship?

Hatty is at an important stage in her life – a life she has worked hard for and earned – but her freedom and choices have been taken away. She should be concentrating on finishing her education, but she has a strong sense of duty towards her younger sister and, because of her mum’s addiction, has been forced to step into mum’s shoes. Hatty is the one that keeps things balanced within the family, that smoothes things over – but by the time we meet her in the book, she’s exhausted and struggling with the responsibilities she’s been burdened with. Hatty has reached that point where she’s trying her best to cope, but with everything spiralling out of control, she also knows she’s out of her depth and there’s no-one she can really turn to. 

 
11. Why include the recipes? What do they contribute to the identity of Liv and her mum? 

As I delved into the character of Liv and got to understand her a bit better, I knew she really needed something that gave her a chance to shine. The handwritten cookbook was originally in the story to a much lesser extent, but they soon took on a more central role, almost characters in their own right. The recipes work on a few different levels. They are weaved into the story, reflecting Liv’s emotional state and circumstances, but they also give an insight into the mum that we don’t see; the mum that Harriet is still trying to believe in and that Liv barely remembers but longs for. 

 

12. How would you sum up Madeline aka Mad Dog?

 Oh, this one is a tricky character. She’s completely unpleasant but really, she is lonely and angry and this translates into being a rough, mean bully. There’s a real edge to her; the kind of person that you would always be nervous around, and that knows this so uses it to her advantage. 


13. Was it important to show layers to her character?

People have so many layers and I think that sometimes we forget this; we expect everyone else to accept our own quirks and nuances, while being overly sensitive to those of others. So I think it’s always important to show the different layers of a character, otherwise they become flat or turn into a caricature. Mad Dog is not a nice character, but people’s circumstances and experiences do affect their behaviour, so I wanted to explore this. Again, it’s all about taking responsibility for our own actions and reactions; about having the strength to overcome challenges, however huge, or repeat the pattern. I don’t expect people to like Mad Dog but I do think they’ll understand why she behaves the way she does, even if they don’t agree with it.


14. Tell us about Jack. How do you see him in this story?

Jack? Oh, he’s a bad kisser – but we’ll try not to hold that against him! Actually, Jack has been through tough times but he’s come out on the other side. He began to make bad choices, but pulled himself around and as a result, he’s much more grounded and confident than his peers. 


 15. And lastly, what came first: the story or the characters? And how did it evolve from there? 

The character Liv Bloom was talking to me for a while before I ever started writing this book, but I also knew that her story was around addiction. At first, I thought she might be the one with the addiction, but as I delved deeper I realised it was someone close to her – her mum. The story evolved through Liv; she had a really strong voice and even though it didn’t come through properly until I switched to first person narrative, she always propelled the story forward. I didn’t expect the food to feature so strongly, but this was a natural progression and the recipes became integral to the story, because they were so important to Liv – and you always have to make decisions that are right for the story.


Caramel Hearts is available now from all good bookstores.

Leigh Bardugo Interview

Interview with Leigh Bardugo on her Magic and Mayhem Tour

 

About Leigh:

 

Leigh Bardugo is the #1 New York Times bestselling author and USA Today bestselling author of Six of Crows (awarded starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, VOYA, SLJ, and the BCCB) and the Grisha Trilogy: Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm, and Ruin and Rising. She was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Los Angeles, and graduated from Yale University, and has worked in advertising, journalism, and most recently, makeup and special effects. These days, she lives and writes in Hollywood where she can occasionally be heard singing with her band.

Interview:

How has the response to Six of Crows been?

It’s been great! It’s been amazing, we debuted at number 1 on the New York Times Bestseller list and we’re still in the top five which is really exciting. I guess more importantly its been really exciting to see people discover Six of Crows who hadn’t even heard of the (Grisha) trilogy, and to see people who really like the trilogy take the leap into the new story.

Whenever you put something new out there’s sort of a fear because it’s a little different, or maybe a lot different, are people going to come along with me? Its meant a lot to me to see people pushing it and promoting it, especially on Tumblr and book-tubing about it.


How do you think your love of Slytherin affects how you write your characters?
I, for one, feel Slytherins are misunderstood and often portrayed in not the most flattering light and that is because history is often written by the Gryffindors. Or the Ravenclaws. I think that the goal is not to make a character likeable. It’s to make the character real. I think Slytherins have an appreciation for all the shades of grey in a given character. Ask Regulus Black, he understands.


Do you identify with any of the crows more than the others? I feel as if you’re like Nina on the outside with some Kaz on the inside.

Kaz is much smarter than I am. There’s a saying that no character can be smarter than the author and that’s really not true. Authors have a lot of time to think and plan and it looks as if Kaz is thinking of these things on the fly when really I’ve been sitting there banging my head against the wall for a couple of weeks.

I wish I had more of Nina’s confidence. But I think she’s the most like me in that I’ve spent my life being told I was too big, too loud, too much of one thing or the other. So I wanted to create a character who was all of those things and really didn’t care. 

When did the idea for Six of Crows come about? Was is during the Grisha trilogy, or after?
Well, I always wanted to write a story in Kerch. And I had this idea for Ketterdam where Nikolai went to university or pretended to go to university. I always wanted to set something there because its almost like the anti-Ravka. Ravka is isolated and old-world, really struggling economically and hasn’t industrialised at all whereas Kerch is prosperous, modern and cosmopolitan. It's on the cutting edge of everything, so I always wanted to set a story there but I didn’t know what story it was going to be. Then I was driving down the street and I saw a billboard for Monuments Men (film -2014) and I was like, I don’t want to see that, but I do want to re-watch Oceans Eleven! And all of a sudden I realised oh my gosh, I want to write a heist story! That’s what I’m going to do! All of these characters that I’d had steeping in the back of my head came to mind and I knew I was going to bring them together and put them on this team, this is exactly the right story for this city. That was the evolution of it.


Did you do a lot of research to build Kerch, like you did in researching Russia to build Ravka?

Research is one of my favourite things because we’re all readers, and research is basically ‘oh, now I have to read for a while. What a chore.’ So I did a lot of research on the Dutch Republic of the 1700’s and Amsterdam and the way that it developed. But also New York, old New York/ New Amsterdam. Also, Victorian London and Las Vegas. There’s all a little bit of them in Ketterdam. I think I was little bit more adventurous in my world-building this time, which was kinda fun.


Was it hard writing from so many points of view, after just writing from Alina’s in the Grisha trilogy?

You know, that wasn’t the hard part. I really enjoyed writing multiple character points of view, because if you got tired of a character or if their story got too dark or too sad, you could switch gears.

I found the heist to be the hardest part to write. That was the thing that took the most work and was most challenging. The release of information and the flashbacks was difficult, it’s a much more complex book than the Grisha trilogy. It’s not linear in the same way.


Do you miss writing the characters from the Grisha trilogy?
I missed them early on in Six of Crows because I hadn’t gotten to know the Crows as much as I knew the characters from the Grisha trilogy. And I find I don’t get to know characters, well, apart from Matthias. I knew him from moment one. He’s very easy to write. He’s a big blonde drama queen - we understand each other. But the other characters took me a while longer. I really got to know them through the process of writing them and getting to know their voices. I think any time you try something new there’s that getting-to-know-you stage, which isn’t always comfortable. It’s a process, sometimes you can ask, ‘why can’t I hear him/her?’ It takes a while to get to know them.


Can we expect to see any of the old characters from the Grisha trilogy in the second novel?

I just turned in the first draft of the sequel to my editor and right now, yes there are some cameos, but I don’t know if they’ll stay so I’m not promising anything, she could just draw a big red X over all of those pages.


I adore Winter Prayer, your song written about the Grisha trilogy. You stated you’d written a song for Six of Crows, what is it about? Can we expect to hear it?
The thing is recording a song takes a lot of time and means calling in a lot of favours from friends, and particularly because I’m not a particularly good musician. I did write the beginning of a song but I don’t know if I'll ever record it. My life, at the minute, is basically tours and deadlines. Someday I wouldn’t mind recording it. It’s a lot simpler than Winter Prayer, which was a big orchestral, sweeping thing. This is more of a folk melody.

I did put lyrics in Six of Crows, there’s a scene with Nina and Inej with a song so I tweaked a few lyrics from a song from my band and put them in.

 

 

What can we expect from the sequel to Six of Crows? (Now named Crooked Kingdom!) 

 

You will get Wylan's point of view.

 

Some ships will sail…and some will be wrecked upon the rocks.

 

Basically, all of the powers of the world are descending on Ketterdam, trying to discover the secrets to this drug. Essentially, the future of the world is going to be decided on the streets. There are some old rivalries that will re-surface, some new enemies and some new allies. For now, its all mostly contained within the world of Ketterdam, particularly the Barrel.

 

  

Can we expect any more folk tales?

 

Maybe. At some points. What I would really like to do is a collection of stories from each of the countries. From the Wandering Isle, Noyvi Zem, Ravka and Fjerda. I would love to write some Fjerdan folk tales - they’d be so dark!

 

 

If you had to get a tattoo to commemorate your books, what would it be?

 

I always feel like its tempting fate to get a tattoo of something from the books. What if the book didn’t do well, and then you had to look at it foreverrrr! We did design a tattoo; it’s the Crow and Cup that the Dregs wear. I honestly don’t know, but there’s a saying that Tolya and Tamar use in the Grisha trilogy which I really love. Its yuyeh sesh (despise your heart), ni weh sesh (I have no heart), the first part of the phrase has been with me since college. It was in a survey of African cultures and there was a phrase in Kikongo which means despise your heart and you would say it before you went to battle. I loved it so much and it stayed with me since I was twenty. I think that is the thing that would be most likely to end up tattooed on me. Despise your heart, which tells you all you need to know about me!

  

 

Is there a character from another book that you’d want to pick up and put into your world or a character from your book that you’d want to pick up and put into another world? 

 

Hmm, sometimes I want to put all my characters in a cute contemporary, so nothing bad will happen to them. But then I think about putting Kaz into a Stephanie Perkins novel and I’m like oh my god, he would steal all their money and break into all their houses. 

 

Actually someone on Tumblr has been putting all the characters into the Hogwarts houses and she put Inej in Gryffindor and I was thinking about how much that made me a little bit sad because that’s the childhood she should’ve had. She should’ve grown up and been safe somewhere. I would put Inej somewhere safe, post (Harry Potter) books, when its peaceful. 

 

 

Any book recommendations?

 

• Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff;

• The Young Elites and The Rose Society by Marie Lu (it just keeps getting better and better!);

• The Sin Eater's Daughter by Melinda Salisbury;

• Anything by Victoria Schwab (I think that all of her books are fantastic);

• Gene Yang - he wrote American Born Chinese and Boxers and Saint (they won a ton of awards. Start with Boxers and Saints, its so good, it’ll destroy you! Then read The Shadow Hero because its charming and fun and happy and it’ll cheer you up);

• Oh! And Rainbow Rowell. I love everything she’s written. Eleanor and Park is still my favourite but I really loved Carry On, which has recently come out.

 

Thank you very much for allowing me to interview you Leigh!

 

Six of Crows is available now from all good bookstores. Grab your copy now!

 

US Superstar Author Michael Grant Chats Books, Success and Mayhem

Michael Grant is the best-selling author of the Gone series, Messenger of Fear and the BZRK trilogy and co-author of Eve & Adam and the Animorphs series with his wife, Katherine Applegate.

Follow Michael on Twitter: @MichaelGrantBks
 
Buy 'Gone':

-  Amazon

-  Foyles
-  Waterstones
 

 

The interview
 

For those that haven’t read it, can you sum up the FAYZ series in a tweet?

Every adult, every rule, every limit: Gone. 332 trapped kids struggle to survive in a mad, violent world. By the end many of them will also be: Gone.

Not sure if that’s under 140 or not. But it’s close, right?


Sure! The FAYZ is an incredibly brutal and violent world. How would you respond to parents that say that your books are too graphic; that children should not be subjected to that kind of brutality? Has this ever been an issue?

Well, we aren’t subjecting kids to any sort of brutality. I only rarely beat actual children with a baseball bat or use my telekinetic powers to toss them off of cliffs.  

The Gone series are six books. Books do not cause injuries. Books do not cause psychological trauma. The number of people killed by speculative fiction remains: zero. Relax, people, relax. Your children are on the internet, you’ve already lost control of what they see and hear and read, stop kidding yourself. Drawing the line at a book - any book - is silly and counterproductive assuming you’d actually like your children to read. 

The words “don’t read that,” should never cross the lips of any adult who wants kids to read. Don’t erect barriers, it’s hard enough to hold onto any audience that has an iPhone, an iPad, a laptop, cable television and a movie theater.


Where did the premise for the FAYZ series come from and how did it evolve?

It started not with Lord of the Flies, which people sometimes assume, but with the TV show Lost. I didn’t even spot the rather obvious LOTF connection until I was halfway through writing Gone.  

The Gone series is most basically a Robinson Crusoe story. Civilized humans suddenly deprived of all the tools and institutions of civilization. There is no authority in the FAYZ universe, no one in charge, no one to turn to. The teens and younger children isolated inside the FAYZ dome are presented with chaos - some kids are developing bizarre powers, animals are mutating - and must manage that chaos as best they can. 


My favourite thing about the FAYZ is the characters. Most of your characters cannot be boxed into binary categories like “good” and “evil”. There are layers and qualities that you develop across the series and the characters change all the time and surprise the reader. Which character did you most enjoy writing?

First, thanks. My characters are defined obviously by my own world view, my own observations and experiences. I have never met a saint. I’ve met some hypocrites pretending to be saints, but never the real thing, the human with virtues unbalanced by vice. I’ve also met some sons of bitches, but even they generally had one or two pleasant character traits - wit, perhaps, or limited degrees of kindness.  

The humans I’ve known - including myself - exist on a moral spectrum, some closer to saint, some closer to devil. To me motivations are always plural never singular. Actions taken may be admirable, even altruistic, but it’s a very rare person who would take even an altruistic action without considering the costs and benefits to himself.

My standard of sainthood are those we call the Righteous Among The Nations. These were the people who despite terrible risks sheltered Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust. I am certain that many of those men and women had mixed motives, and some may have seen advantage for themselves or at least rationalized in that way. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need a person to be pure all the way down to the bone, I only need for them to do the right thing in the end. Doing the right thing at a time when doing so meant risking your life and the lives of your family is a level of moral courage that leaves me amazed and abashed.


Did you know when you started the series that it would be a six-book series? Did you know from the beginning the trajectory that each of your characters would take? 

Yep, I pitched it and sold it as a six book deal. My explanation to the acquiring editor was that “it feels like six books.” Not exactly science at work there, just instinct and experience.  

No idea of the character arcs or indeed of the story. I’m an improviser not a planner. I make it up every day when I sit down and grab my laptop. This makes it a bit scary for me, but also unpredictable for readers. I like being unpredictable.  


The FAYZ series has been a phenomenal success. Do you feel a certain level of pressure when you approach a new series or project?


The pressure is always the same: to produce a good read. I’m here to amuse and frighten and engage readers. If I accomplish that then I’ve done my job.  

Work has a special place in my life. I found my upbringing and my education absurd and irrelevant. I didn’t find meaning in my life until I dropped out of high school and took my first job at age 16. Toys R Us, during the run-up to Christmas. I liked that it was hard, I liked that I was able to outperform adults, and most of all I liked the rationality of it: I give them an hour’s work, they give me an hour’s pay.  

The idea of work, the idea of a job came to be quasi-sacred to me. It became the organizing principle of my life, I suppose. I work hard, I try always to do my best. That’s the only pressure I really care about. Well, that and money. Let’s not forget the eternal need for money.


How did you find the manuscript to book publication process the first time around with Gone?

Painless. I wrote Book #1 on spec - without a contract. When was done I submitted it to half a dozen publishers and got offers from 5 of 6. I took the best offers. 


BZRK was an incredible transmedia project. How did you find it? And do you feel this is something that may help build a stronger community around teenage readers in the future?

The transmedia elements turned out to be a distraction, really. What excited me about BZRK as a story, as a concept, was that I knew I had never read or seen anything like it. I felt complete freedom, complete indifference to the usual tropes. BZRK actually changed my world view, I saw all of reality in a subtly different way. I’ve never before had that happen, that one of my own books would change my understanding of reality. BZRK is scary in a whole different way than GONE and in a whole different way than people expect and it honestly scares me still. That just occurred to me in writing this answer: BZRK is the first time I scared me.


Tell us a little bit about Messenger of Fear. Where did the ideas and mythology come from

Messenger of Fear is a bit personal in that it deals so much with flawed characters and their redemption — personal in that I’ve required some redemption myself. It’s basically a grim reaper story, tangentially inspired by the movie, The Seventh Seal.  

Just a moment ago I received a very nice review from Kirkus of book #2, The Tattooed Heart, which is very nice to get.  

 My favourite book of yours is actually Eve and Adam. The narration, the plot, the characters – I loved it everything about it. The book itself feels very uniform, like it was written by one author. What was it like to co-write a book with your wife? Was it a harmonious process? 

I had worked with my wife on various series including ghostwriting, creating our own teen romance series, then Animorphs, so we sort of knew how to do that, to work together. In the case of Eve and Adam I built the bones and put some muscle on it, Katherine added the flesh.


Which of your books are you most proud of and why?

As a sort of technical challenge, the Gone series was the most complex, the one requiring the most creativity and nerve on a daily basis. I felt I pulled it off as a series, in other words as one long narrative. Readers liked each book a little more than the one before until by the time we reached LIght it was almost unanimous support. That’s not always the case with series, so I was pleased that I had pulled it off.  

In terms of commercial success, and in terms of long-term impact on kids, the Animorphs series stands head and shoulders above anything else I’ve written or co-authored.  

But like most authors my most recent book is my favorite. It’s called Front Lines and will be out next spring. That was a hard write, well outside my usual comfort zone, but I felt I did a good job, and of course that’s my goal.


You’re on Mars and you have meagre food reserves. You have no communication with Earth, no battery life for your Kindle and you’re down to your last two canisters of oxygen. You have just enough time to read five books. What five would you choose?

 I doubt very much I’d be reading, I’d be looking for a way to survive. Like that great philosopher, James T. Kirk, I don’t believe in no-win scenarios. But if I did read it would probably be a Flashman book for the laughs, or one of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series. Or maybe Lee Childs because surely Jack Reacher (Childs’ best-known character) would know how to survive an airless planet.  


Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us, Michael. Michael's new book, Front Lines will be published on 28 January 2016 by Egmont Books so mark it in your calenders now!